Alone. How does that word make you feel? Isolated, lonely, as if you need to find a friend? At moments we've all felt alone, even among family and friends, and most of us have had more desperate times when the ache inside to be comforted and companioned seemed almost unbearable.

Facing the enigma of mortal life, with its disappointments and trials, usually seems more bearable with the support of those we love. But what if our loved ones can't be with us or are unable to help us? What can we count on to give us a solid sense of serenity and satisfaction? Eventually we will all have to turn to something beyond people in order to find our strength and our happiness.

Mrs. Eddy speaks to this point in Science and Health, the textbook of Christian Science: "Would existence without personal friends be to you a blank? Then the time will come when you will be solitary, left without sympathy; but this seeming vacuum is already filled with divine Love. When this hour of development comes, even if you cling to a sense of personal joys, spiritual Love will force you to accept what best promotes your growth." ^{Science and Health, p. 266.}

Being left alone may not seem like growth and development to you, but don't be discouraged by it. Consider what Christ Jesus did in the garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion. When he most yearned for the support of his friends, they slept. He asked, "Could ye not watch with me one hour?" ^{Matt. 26:40.} "There was no response to that human yearning," states Science and Health, "and so Jesus turned forever away from earth to heaven, from sense to Soul." ^{Science and Health, p. 48.}

It was Jesus' very relinquishment of any mortal attachment and his understanding of spiritual oneness with God, Soul, that enabled him to accomplish the resurrection. This was definitely an instance where human aid was unavailable. Had Jesus not relied solely on God, he would have been unready for resurrection.

Love will bring all of us to the point of growth and development where we will turn from dependence on mortals to a growing understanding of God as our support, our reason for being, and in fact our only real Life.

I found myself at this point of growth when I was left to raise my two preschool children on my own. My husband had passed on, and while I had family and friends nearby, I still felt a deep need to gain a dependable sense of peace. One day the word alone pounded in my thinking until I decided to face it head-on and gain a more spiritual view of aloneness.

I remembered a passage from Mrs. Eddy's Message to The Mother Church for 1901: "The Christian Scientist is alone with his own being and with the reality of things." ^{'01., p. 20.} It seemed to me that this kind of aloneness couldn't be painful or bad. I pondered what "his own being" and "the reality of things" might be.

Also I looked up the word alone in Roget's Thesaurus. I found it interesting that one of the references to "alone" was included in the section titled "Unity." In reading through that section, I noticed such terms as oneness, individuality, solidarity. Everything I was looking for! Then I realized that it was my unity with God that sustained me and that I could never be separated from God, good, or from any needed manifestation of love. To me this unity of God and man had to be "the reality of things."

Within a year I was married, and while I was most grateful for the love, companionship, and support my husband brought to the entire family, I felt that my dependence had truly changed from people to God. I continued daily to seek a secure sense of peace in my unity with God.

Just another happy ending for someone else? No. If you are feeling alone right now, you can be sure that Love is tenderly bringing you also to a sense of joy and comfort that is entirely separate from any tenuous human source. And when you stop using your prayers to ask God to give you human relationships and start using them to awaken your thought to your unity, or oneness, with God, you will surely see that your "seeming vacuum is already filled with divine Love" too.

This secure sense of oneness with Love can evidence itself in many ways—possibly a marriage partner or an expanded group of friends or an even more supportive church experience. But without question it will bring an adjustment of your outlook by giving you more of that unshakable confidence expressed by the Apostle Paul when he said, "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." ^{Rom. 8:38, 39.}

Awakening to the scientific sense of man's inseparability from God allows us to see the natural harmony that has always been man's true state, and to experience this harmony humanly. The Christian Science textbook states, "The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind." ^{Science and Health, p. 162.}

How should we feel when we hear the word alone? Safe, secure, comforted, grateful, and blessed, because it reminds us that we are at one with God, forever.